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Updated: May 4, 2025
But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig in town that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake had to sell his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdas great satisfaction, apparently.
Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch them. When Ántonia and her father got into the wagon, I entreated grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas’ barn and run home in the morning.
Ántonia often quoted his opinions to me, and she let me see that she admired him, while she thought of me only as a little boy. Before the spring was over, there was a distinct coldness between us and the Shimerdas. It came about in this way. One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar which Ambrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned. It was a beautiful blue morning.
“I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about these things,” said grandfather, “and I would never be the one to say you were not in God’s care when you were among the soldiers.” After dinner it was decided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong black farmhorses to the scraper and break a road through to the Shimerdas’, so that a wagon could go when it was necessary.
Shimerda had not been rich and selfish; he had only been so unhappy that he could not live any longer. OTTO FUCHS got back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reported that the coroner would reach the Shimerdas’ sometime that afternoon, but the missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundred miles away, and the trains were not running.
Jake and Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the pool of blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground. When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas’ house, we found the women-folk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda sat crouching by the stove, Ántonia was washing dishes.
Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch them. When Antonia and her father got into the wagon, I entreated grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas' barn and run home in the morning.
The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas' place and made the land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the ravine.
'When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was to be married, she was over here about every day. They've never had a sewing-machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here. I taught her hemstitching, and I helped her to cut and fit.
Jake and I got supper, and while we were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about the state of things over at the Shimerdas’. Nobody could touch the body until the coroner came. If any one did, something terrible would happen, apparently. The dead man was frozen through, “just as stiff as a dressed turkey you hang out to freeze,” Jake said.
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